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Miss Toyama is by the artist Takizawa Kōryūsai II. Her kimono crest is the yaezakura (eight petal cherry blossom) and she was originally placed in the Speed Museum, in Louisville, Kentucky where she remains today.
Louisville is located on the banks of the Ohio River, and, in 1937, the city experienced a catastrophic flood that inundated nearly 70% of the city and took nearly a month for the floodwaters to recede. Parts of the Speed Museum and its storage areas were heavily flooded and many of its objects were lost. Miss Toyama, too, was considered a casualty of this tragedy. But, quite unexpectedly, and somewhat miraculously, in 1992 she was rediscovered in the museum’s storage basement, still in her original US-made travel trunk. Further investigation also revealed nearly all of her accessories carefully packed away in another box. All of these were sodden and needed extensive conservation.
Today Miss Toyama is as beautiful as the day she was created by Kōryūsai in 1927 complete with nearly all of her accessories, missing only her display stand and lanterns.